


What more remains?

by Lilliburlero



Category: Richard II - Shakespeare
Genre: Homophobic Language, Intercrural Sex, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Male Friendship, Oral Sex, Period-Typical Homophobia, Sharing a Bed, White Hart of Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 04:23:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10071320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: King Richard visits Kings Langley. Aumerle gets what he wants, in a manner of speaking.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angevin2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angevin2/gifts).



> Any resemblance to historical accuracy, living or dead, is purely accidental.
> 
> Although I don't personally consider sex between first cousins incest and nor, in general, does this fandom, be advised that this fic does draw attention to the blood relationship.

The letters pursued Edward through his dreams. Sometimes they became Father, or Uncle John, though at the same time they didn’t stop being letters; the parchment twisted at the corners and assumed York’s purposeful, bandy stride, or sprouted from its top margin Lancaster’s haggard pate, coifed as if for bed. They shrieked and barked the phrases that had caused him the most intense mortification, phrases approved, of course, by his father, who superintended the whole of his correspondence with the King.

‘Don’t worry, Ned,’ York had said, patting his hand. ‘It’s all only so much palaver and what you can get out of ‘em. I know it’s a bit uncomfortable, Himself being quite so much the way he is, but he’d be the last person in the world to take advantage―’ 

Edward noticed how hard even a cushioned settle could become under conditions of intense embarrassment. He knew his face, always rather high-coloured, was scarlet. _Of course_ the King wouldn’t proposition a gentleman of his bedchamber. That was the awful, ghastly, appalling thing about it. ‘I know, Father,’ he said carefully, extracting his hand. ‘Let’s just get on with it, shall we?’ 

‘Good lad. Now, Roger, where were we?― _like affections, so discovered and sounded_ ―what came then?’ 

The secretary raised a too-neutral face from the fist on which he’d been resting it, and picked up his stylus. ‘― _proceedeth from the heart and bowel_ , my lord―’ 

‘Oh, no, not _bowel_. No, we shan’t have _bowel_ , shall we? _Bowel_ is altogether too _bowelly_. Liver―no, no―those rissoles at dinner were rather ammoniac, weren’t they―’ 

‘Entrails, my lord?’ Roger suggested, in the especially colourless voice he reserved for editorial intervention. 

‘Capital, capital, entrails. And then what was it, Ned?’ 

A thin breathy sound escaped Edward’s lips in lieu of speech. He turned it into a cough. ‘And carried,’ he swallowed. 

‘Speak up, boy!’ York bellowed. 

‘And carried me with much love unto your Grace’s bosom,’ Edward piped, ‘wherein was I b-bowered and caressed nigh to the rising of aurora―’ 

‘Better make that _Grace_ a _Majesty_ , Roger. Splendid―splendid. Don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, but the northern fleet’s going begging, and an admiralty would be jolly good, wouldn’t it―?’ 

The dreams about the letters always ended when Edward's foot met an obstruction and he stumbled. But before he could hit the ground the biggest of the animate leaves, with a wingspan of fully three yards, would seize him by the neck of his doublet and bear him to a cloud-wreathed mountain which he knew to be Olympus. Tonight, though, he could not let himself sleep. 

Lying with his shoulder, hip and knee rigidly aligned along the edge of the mattress, Edward reflected that it had been easier than he’d expected―the King, he realised slowly, feeling foolish, had _made_ it easier, treating him with an affable good fellowship, keeping him close with courteous small enquiries, yet not making him conspicuous with particular favour. Even his choice of dress seemed calculated to spare Edward undue travail: ordering his own people to deal with the magnificently weighty gold costume in which he had appeared in the hall that evening, he came to the bedchamber wearing an ochre silk undergown and an overgarment of astonishing, breathtaking perse velvet, the bluest blue Edward had ever seen. The servants brought wine and comfits, and it was the King’s pleasure that they might pray together before retiring. To keep his mind upon his orisons and from the surpassing grace of the King’s long fingers, denuded of their rings, whose tips, held in an attitude of devotion, almost touched the pink, murmuring underlip, proved altogether beyond Edward’s capacity. He comforted himself, a little uncertainly, with the thought that to contemplate beauty is to perceive God’s goodness at work in the world. As Edward slipped the gowns from the King’s shoulders, and handed them to the attendants, His Majesty spoke of a small hinged altarpiece that he had recently commissioned, that he could take with him upon all his progresses. No nightcap seemed to be forthcoming; Edward resolved that he too would sleep sensuously bareheaded. 

The best bed was quite high: if Edward were to sit on it as the King then did his feet would dangle. But the King was much taller: Edward knelt to remove vair-lined slippers. In the King’s perfume Edward could discern rose and orris, and something else that he could not place, which brought to mind the cool avenues of Coimbra, but under the sweet scent was a vinegar pungency that revealed even God’s anointed as mortal flesh. Edward’s head swam. The King’s stockings were gartered just below the knee: on the right the knot was turned out, but on the left it had shifted to the back. Edward fumbled under the hem of the King’s shirt, trying to untie the knot where it was, brushing tender royal skin before he came to his senses, and eased the silken cord round again. The King, still discoursing on lapis lazuli, seemed not to notice. A hovering page darted in and swooped up the discarded footwear. The fuzz on the King’s legs was rather thick and rufous, but his bony, ivory-pale feet seemed to demand abasement and spikenard. Too giddy even to begin working out how blasphemous a thought that was, Edward took a deep breath. It didn’t help: the King’s musky, corporeal odour hit him with renewed force, and he felt the abdominal torsion that was the immediate prelude to a cockstand. Desperately, he thought of cold, greasy pond-water and hairshirts, which worked, for once. The King swung his legs onto the bed. Edward reeled to his feet and drew the bedclothes over his lord’s long body. 

‘―and he said he thought eleven wasn’t a _symmetrical_ number, which is just not trying hard enough, is it? I said symmetry's your job, Master Dauber, not ours. A dozen is so obvious, as if angels were loaves of bread. And we have two dozen of years next Epiphany, so we are all out with dozens. Good night, cousin.’ 

He wriggled his shoulders against the bolster and extended a hand; Edward pressed reverent lips to it, then drew the curtains. 

‘Good night, my most gracious lord.’ 

The well-trained servants saw swiftly to his own disrobing and their various nocturnal duties, but by the time he got into bed the King was drowsing, fatigued with the effort of being looked at all day. He kept his rangy limbs neatly contained in sleep. Edward shook his head at a servingman with a candle, who bowed and drew the curtain on his side. He listened to the King’s slumberous breathing, wondering if, like a lot of people who dropped off easily, he would wake in the small hours demanding to be entertained. Edward wasn’t very good at that: he tended to carthorse stupidity if roused before light. Father said it showed he was yet a boy, to be able to sleep the night through. 

If that were so, then the King also was yet a boy, because Edward woke from a dream of a barren strand and a storm whipping up at sea, from which his only defence was a small, dead letterbird, which he tried hopelessly to arrange over his naked groin, to find the King's side of the curtains thrown open, and chill light bathing the bed. A tall figure stood at the casement, partially blocking the light but none of the chill. Edward wanted to piss, he was half-hard with the desire to piss. He was the grandson of the same king that the King was, he thought blearily, and their grandfather had been, if anecdote were to be believed, the sort of king whose presence you could piss in, as long as you didn’t actually take the piss. The present King was not that sort of king. 

He turned. ‘Edward,' he whispered. 'Come and look.’ 

Edward did not need to look at the park at Kings Langley, which he could quite easily look at from his own far less commodious apartment any day of the year and usually, tediously, did. He needed to piss. He disentangled himself from the bedclothes and crawled across the bed. His feet met the small Turkey carpet which muted, but did not repel, icy draughts from below. He padded across the rushes to where the King stood. The King opened his right arm in salutation and Edward dithered, deciding to navigate around it just as the tapering fingertips met his shoulder. Edward lurched heavily leftwards and found himself for a moment steadied against the King’s sinewy person, hot as fever. Then the presence withdrew to the mere ghost of a touch on his shoulders. The clear cold air from the window hardened his nipples but shrank his prick sufficiently that it no longer obtruded upon his shirt. His bladder convulsed and clenched. 

‘You’re a perfect mooncalf in the morning. Delightful, but you’ll wake the staff. Look.’ 

He looked. There was the park, that he could see any day of the year, transmuted into something from a geste. A broiling red disc inched devilishly above the horizon, suffusing the sky with luxurious pink and gold, against which the gatehouse, two miles distant, stood like a black tooth in need of pulling; the gentle incline of Langley Hill was softly salted with twinkling frost, the first of the year. Mist scudded over the low ground. And there, his betrayingly brown legs and hindquarters concealed in the fog, stood Langley’s half-tame, half-white hart, looking quite uncharacteristically elven, as if he had been born from the pearly mirk, and to it he would in an instant return. Edward smiled, about to tell the King what a mangy old creature he really was, preserved for twenty years by a mixture of affection and superstition, why, the beast would practically feed from one’s hand, like an old mare―but some odd impulse told him to turn around first. The King’s face was rapt, his eyes grey-blue like a slab of ice, melting, his lips parted, showing the tips of his enviable teeth. There was a long trail of dusty yellow sleep in the corner of his right eye, and his bright crisp curls were flat and matted where he had slept on them, slept contained, graceful and still. 

‘Oh, Edward.’ There was one big hand on his shoulder and the other at the base of his―no, on his arse, hot as fever but dry as bone, and the King’s lips were on his, and the King’s tongue, warmly inquiring, between them. 

‘Mrmkgr,’ Edward said. ‘Mrkgnao.’ He shouldn’t be struggling. This was something he’d wanted since he could remember wanting things like this, the _only_ thing like this he’d ever properly wanted without having to work himself up to it. He needed to piss. 

The King broke away. ‘No? Oh my dear, I could have sworn―I’m so rarely wrong, you know―’ 

‘No. No. Yes. I mean. Yes. Yes, yes, I mean yes, please, yes. My lord. Your Majesty. But I’m fucking dying for a fucking slash.’ 

Edward had spoken in something akin to his father’s sudden, exasperated boom; the King blinked and startled, then snorted with laughter. One of the liveried men stationed by the massive Totternhoe chalk chimneypiece stirred. 

‘Everything all right over there―er―duh, your Grace?’ 

‘Absolutely.’ The King reached over Edward’s shoulder to push the casement shut. The gesture, though characteristically fluid and smooth, seemed strange somehow. It was not until several days later that Edward realised how rarely one saw the―saw _Richard_ perform some such trivial action for himself. 'Dear boy, what are you standing there for―like, well, that's too literal. Use the damned pot.' 

Relieved, Edward crawled back into bed, pulling the curtain behind him. 

‘Leave a chink. I want to see you, with your hair all on end and pouting―you know what I mean. Come _here_.’ 

A long kiss left Edward achingly erect, on the shameful brink of spilling, but stymied by unguessed protocol―upon finding one’s sovereign’s very _fons et origo_ of sovereignty pressed hard against one’s belly, does one lift his shirt and clasp it, or wait for him to situate it where he desires? Richard's hands rambled happily over Edward's backside, until he seemed to perceive the nature of the inhibition and murmured, 'Sweeting, I thought you understood. We're just men, here. _Ce que vous voudres_ , you know. What a very delicious arse you have.' 

Edward recognised that it would probably be politic if his first expression of self-will were to suck King Richard’s cock, but he had not expected to enjoy it quite as much as he did. Best of all was the knowledge that the lord to whom one’s life belonged, whom in the field one could not with honour outlive, had just helplessly discharged his hackling packet down one’s throat. But it was surprisingly pleasant merely to feel Richard’s cockhead springing against his palate, to have a mouthful of salty, hefting prick. Edward feared himself to be a sodomite. If he was, though, it was Father’s fault, and Uncle John’s, for the Portugal debâcle, and the lack of effort they’d put into finding him a bride since, as if he were somehow tainted by _their_ feeble Iberian intrigues. 

Richard raised him with a horizontal version of the gesture with which he had invested him with the Garter. Edward wondered briefly what it might be like to serve a king who had not been a king since before his ballocks dropped, whose mannerisms had been forged and settled in the dreary traffic of courtiership long before he took the throne. 

‘What would you like, Edward? You may have whatever you please.’ 

Even Father couldn’t expect that he would be so crass as to mention the northern fleet at a such a moment. So he told the truth, and took his satisfaction between the lean, white, quivering thighs of a king. 

Many years later, in a dank, smelly tent in Picardy, it would occur to him that Richard had not been deceived by the old fallow buck of Langley: he had seen him clear, in all the absurdity of dominion, and understood without sentimentality the nature of their similitude. One unremarkable morning, some four months or so into the reign of Henry, Fourth of that name, Edward's hounds had found the stag in a copse, dead of old age―which, where beasts were concerned, was almost always a euphemism for starvation and drought. _A.D. xiii. kal. Mar_., Edward had written in his logbook, noting that the state of the carcase indicated a date of death two or three days before. And then news from Pomfret had lent the dismal, abject little episode the stiff lineaments of allegory. It was ridiculous, but such correspondences really did happen, when Richard was around. Edward smiled under the dripping, fetid canvas, quite unable to say why the thought was an encouraging one, but nonetheless better able to face impossible odds against survival. 

But to tell the story of how that October day fell out is to run ahead in our history. Let us say thus far: Edward got his admiralty, with many grants of land and honour beside, and a handful of sunshine days.

**Author's Note:**

> Portugal debâcle: as part of John of Gaunt's machinations to control the throne of Castile, his nephew Edward was briefly betrothed to Beatrice of Portugal, along, it seems, with about half the available male aristocratic population of Europe (poor Beatrice). It's the subject of [this fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1839139), for which the usual caveats in re: historical accuracy apply.


End file.
